Arriving anywhere after a 43 hour journey is a daunting enough experience. But instead of a nice air-conditioned air bridge, you are faced with an airport building that has been rendered unusable. You walk down the steps of the plane to retrieve your luggage that has been placed on the apron - no nicely revolving carousel where someone else has already done a lot of the hard work. And with luggage in tow, which is being dragged, pushed, carried or if lucky balanced on an airport trolley, entry into tents where hot and potentially irritable Immigration officers are using laptops to process passengers, and Customs too are operating from the same tent. Cue for a severe sense of humour failure from someone, anyone!
Not a bit of it!
The passengers understood, and co-operated. The immigration and the customs officials, clearly working way out of their comfort zone - both physically and mentally I would say (we have just had another after shock as I write this), were professional, calm and industrious. No wonder that Chile has earned its reputation for being the foremost Latin American country (with all due apologies to friends from other neighbouring countries).
Yes, there has been the unseemly sight of looting particularly in the hardest hit areas - this is not an unusual phenomenon, distasteful though it might be to those of us who have lost nothing, but a means of pure survival for many who have lost everything. Sadly some of the "loot" was nothing to do with survival - more for personal gain. But what I have found amazing is the fact that following condemnation of this practice from the President downwards, some USD2m worth of non-food, non-essential items have been returned.
Speaking to many people in the country of this catastrophe, they are remarkably positive. Chile is after all, they say, a country known to suffer from earthquakes - many of then annually - but thankfully not so many on the scale of the massive earthquake that arrived on 27 February. An earthquake that was 500 times bigger in magnitude to the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. They will survive it and move on, as they have done before. And while the theme of my last blog about charity is fresh, an event was held in Chile over this weekend where a charity show was held to raise money for the victims of the earthquake. The target, 15bn Pesos or around USD30m. The result? Almost double! Money from everyone, everywhere - anybody who had anything to give.
The aftershocks may still be coming, but the country is holding up well - and all power to it's success!
Hi David,
Thanks for the read and helping me to keep my feet on the ground.
Regards
Greg
Posted by: Greg Murray | 13 March 2010 at 11:57